The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’

Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.

By

Laurence H. Silberman

Feb. 8, 2015 6:25 pm ET

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s...